by Suraj Oyewale

No one retires government money. Even if retirement is an obligation, it is a matter of claiming that the surgery actually took place. But not Akunyili. She voluntarily refunded the surgery money.

While admonishing participants at a mentoring conference my platform, JarusHub Career and Management Portal, organized for a select team of Nigerian youths in September last year, one of the guest speakers, Mr. Simon Kolawole,  erstwhile editor of THISDAY newspaper and founder of The Cable Online Newspaper, told a story that held the audience spellbound.

Former Director General of the National Agency for Food Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Professor Dora Akunyili, Kolawole narrated, rose to lofty positions because of a single act of honesty. In 1998, the story goes, as Coordinator of the South East Zone of late General Sani Abacha’s Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), Mrs Akunyili had a medical case and she needed to seek medical attention abroad. The treatment would cost $17,000 and her employers, the PTF, headed by General Muhammadu Buhari, decided to foot the bill. They released the funds for her. She made the trip.

On pre-surgery examination in the United States, it was decided that the surgery, which will take $12,000 of the total amount released, was not necessary again. Akunyili was advised not to go for the surgery. Now, what happened to the $12,000 surgery money already released by her employers? In private sector where there is accountability, escaping with such money is hardly possible, except the employee cooks up some documents to prove that such fund was actually spent. But in the Nigeria’s public sector, such money is not refunded. No one retires government money. Even if retirement is an obligation, it is a matter of claiming that the surgery actually took place. But not Akunyili. She voluntarily refunded the surgery money.

The news got to the Chairman of the PTF, General Muhammadu Buhari, whose name some Nigerians will take to bank, that one of her subordinates did the impossible in Nigeria’s public service – refunded $12,000 government money when she could have easily gone with it. The General called her to his office and handed a letter of commendation to her. It was a rare case of honesty in Nigeria’s public service.

A year after, when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo became the President and reportedly needed someone he can trust to clean the mess in Nigeria’s drug market, news got to him, Kolawole said from Buhari himself, that there was one honest Nigerian pharmacist that should be able to do the job. The story of her honest act in PTF was told to Obasanjo and Obasanjo decided to go with her, defying advice from some people within presidency who believed that being an Igbo woman, Akunyili was the last person to be considered for the job of cleaning the Augean stable in a market dominated her tribesmen. The rest is history. Obasanjo’s choice paid off. Her performance turned out to be probably the best from any appointed public servant in Nigeria since 1999.

This story, which Kolawole told in my Lekki conference last year, would later become public knowledge after her death last month, reported by Kolawole’s The Cable Newspaper.

The moral of it is straight forward: honesty will forever remain a virtue. It has no alternative.

May God comfort the Akunyili family.

OBASANJO’S MANAGEMENT STYLE IN PERSPECTIVE

As a blogger with bias for management styles of personalities, I will classify Obasanjo as probably the best talent manager to ever rule Nigeria. The man is a good headhunter that knows how to source for talent whenever he needs one, most times ignoring politics. When he needed someone to give the tough job of returning Abuja to its masterplan, he reportedly set a simple criterion: I need someone who will demolish even my mother’s house if found to not to follow the city’s masterplan, or something to that effect. Nasir El-Rufai was recommended to him and he got the job done. Similar stories for Nuhu Ribadu and other high performing members of the team he assembled. Now, with the Dora story, it has been proved beyond doubt that Obasanjo surely knows how to get the best. Does the sacrifice of a performing sports Minister on the altar of politics by a certain Goodluck Jonathan come to mind? I leave you to compare and contrast.

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Suraj Oyewale, a chartered accountant, blogger and public analyst, is the Founder of JarusHub Career & Management Portal. He can be reached via [email protected]. He tweets from @mcjarus